Former 49ers head coach Walsh dies

The groundbreaking football coach won three Super Bowls and perfected the ingenious schemes that became known as the West Coast offense.

DAVE NEWHOUSE

Bill Walsh, who lifted the 49ers to greatness and his stagnant coaching career into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, died Monday from the effects of leukemia. He was 75.

"He was the finest coach who ever coached football," said Bill Ring, who played running back and coached for Walsh. "His ability to game plan, to strategize, he was ahead of the curve."

Walsh didn't become an NFL head coach until he was 47, in 1979, when he was hired by the 49ers, who never had won an NFL title and had fired three coaches the previous two seasons.

Three seasons later, they won the first of three Super Bowls under Walsh, who laid the groundwork for two more Super Bowl victories.

"He was a team builder," said Randy Cross, an offensive lineman on Walsh's three Super Bowl champions. "There's only one person in my lifetime who was like that in building a team, Red Auerbach (of the Boston Celtics)."

Walsh was viewed as an offensive mastermind.

"It shouldn't be called the West Coast offense," said Cross. "It should be called the Walsh offense."

Before Walsh's influence, offensive football was run-oriented. But Walsh was willing to run or pass on any down.

"Football's a very physical game, blacksmiths pounding the anvil," said Mike Holmgren, the Seattle Seahawks head coach who was a 49ers assistant under Walsh. "Bill approached it differently. He recognized the toughness, but he always said, 'Let's think outside the box.' He saw it as an artist."

Walsh's image was that of a silver-haired man in a white sweater standing on the 49ers sideline, a finger on one cheek, a hand supporting an elbow, talking into a headset, always contemplating.

"What's he listening to, Mozart?" wrote columnist Jim Murray.

Walsh populated the NFL with head coaches -- Holmgren, Dennis Green, George Seifert, Ray Rhodes and Sam Wyche among them -- who trained under him. He won a Super Bowl with four African-American assistants when two NFL teams had none.

"One of the most fitting things you can say about Bill," noted Cross, "and he'd blush if you said it, was that he was completely colorblind. He knew talent."

Walsh initiated the Black Coaches Summer Program at the 49ers training camp, inviting college coaches not only to observe how Walsh ran things, but letting them coach the 49ers. The program later was adopted leaguewide. Current NFL head coaches Herman Edwards, Lovie Smith and Marvin Lewis went through Walsh's program.

"Marvin Lewis mentions that to me every time I sit down to talk to him -- every time," said Cross, now an NFL television commentator.

"I was the first black executive of the 49ers, and one of the first in the NFL," said former 49ers receiver R.C. Owens, who became their training camp director and alumni coordinator under Walsh.

"Bill was a contemporary," said Owens, "very honest, straightforward, concerned. But he was concerned about blacks and whites. It wasn't 'you' or 'them.'

"One summer, I had a family problem and needed to leave training camp. Bill told me to take as much time as I needed. When I had my (kidney) transplant, he was there. When I needed a loan to buy a house, I wanted to go to the front office. Bill said, 'I'll give it to you.'

"I was able to pay him back, but he didn't hesitate," said Owens. "I told him, 'I love you, Bill.' He said, 'I love you, too.' That's not the Walsh you think of, but that's his other side."

Walsh's personality was as complex as he was.. He was not above chastising other coaches and competing college programs during his two coaching stays at Stanford. But he'd also send bottles of wine as peace offerings. He could be most gracious in interviews after a loss and on the attack after a win.

"People don't understand that all the great coaches have another persona," said Cross. "The current example of Bill Walsh is Bill Belichick. They protect their image.

"The Bill Walsh we think of -- the genius, the professor -- it was useful, but that wasn't him. When he was building the 49ers in 1979 and 1980, he came to team parties with (wife) Geri."

And when the 49ers arrived for their first Super Bowl in freezing Michigan weather in January 1982, Walsh greeted them at the hotel disguised as a bellhop and continued the charade until they recognized him.

Walsh had a sense of humor, but he knew misery as well. Geri, his wife of 50-plus years, suffered a debilitating stroke that required around-the-clock nursing care at their Woodside home, even before Walsh contracted leukemia. His oldest of three children, Steve, a onetime KGO reporter, died of AIDS, according to the father.

Bill Walsh's early boyhood was spent in Los Angeles. His father was an auto plant worker, which required the family to move often. Walsh attended three high schools, the last being Hayward High, where he was a quarterback and running back. He then played quarterback at College of San Mateo before transferring to San Jose State.

When his athletic dreams fizzled --he was a backup end on the football team and a reserve on the boxing team -- he used it as motivationto succeed as a coach.

After two years in the Army, Walsh built a championship team at Washington High in Fremont before becoming an assistant coach at Cal, Stanford and then the Oakland Raiders in 1966.

"You had to hold them back -- Walsh, Dick Vermeil, Mike White -- they were going 90 miles an hour," said John Ralston, Stanford's coach in the early 1960s when the three served as his assistants.

"I've always thought of Bill as being a brilliant offensive coach. When Bill was with the Cincinnati Bengals later on, Paul Brown told him to stay home on Mondays, do the offensive game plan, then come in Tuesday and present it to the staff. He was that brilliant.

"But Bill's legacy," Ralston added, "has to be total organization. He just did it all."

In 1967, Walsh took a position he preferred not to discuss -- he had it omitted from his coaching biography -- as head coach and general manager of the semipro San Jose Apaches.

"It wasn't the tank town team I expected," said Michael Zagaris, the team photographer for the 49ers and Oakland A's who tried out for the Apaches as a split end. "It was like being on the Colts. On the clock. Everyone had something to do. We had uniforms like the Raiders.

"I was there three weeks, then started law school at Santa Clara. Bill seemed like someone who was consumed by what he was doing. I don't want to say he was remote or aloof, but he was in another sphere. This is a guess, but I thought he felt it was beneath him at that time in his life."

In 1968, Walsh began a seven-year relationship with the Bengals, where his reputation for molding quarterbacks took shape. When Brown stepped down as head coach after the 1975 season, Walsh expected to replace him. But Brown picked Bill "Tiger" Johnson as his successor.

Thirty years later, Walsh shared his belief that Brown "worked against my candidacy" to become an NFL head coach.

"All the way through (the Cincinnati years), I had opportunities and I never knew about them," he said. "And then when I left (Brown), he called whoever he thought was necessary to keep me out of the NFL."

Walsh joined the San Diego Chargers in 1976, where he developed Dan Fouts into a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback. In 1977, he was hired as Stanford's coach.

He immediately led Stanford to 9-3 and 8-4 records and victories in the Sun Bowl (LSU) and Bluebonnet Bowl (Georgia).

The 49ers, on the heels of a 2-14 season, took notice. Club owner Eddie DeBartolo picked Walsh as his new head coach..

A 2-14 record in 1979 and a 6-10 record in '80 left the 49ers faithful wondering about his coaching ability. One year later, all doubts were answered when the 49ers won their first Super Bowl.. By the end of the 1980s, they were anointed the NFL's "Team of the Decade."

"I think of Bill as more of a mentor," said Ring. "He was the finest coach, but he influenced literally thousands of people."

"I think of Bill as creative," said Tom Holmoe, former Cal head coach and current BYU athletic director, who was a defensive back under Walsh. "I've never seen people who look at things the same way as Bill.

"People called him a genius, and some of it was sarcastic. But the more I get away from him, the more I believe it. The detail of what he does, the vision of what he sees, I've just never seen it anywhere else."

Though Walsh was often described as cerebral, he was never far removed from the fighter he had been at San Jose State.

"He was part MacArthur, part Bobo Olson," said Zagaris. "When the (49ers) team stretched before practice, Bill would go around shadow-boxing."

Holmoe said: "He was as competitive a person as I've ever seen. He taught me how to fight in football, and for all of us to work hard for something, to lay it on the line.

"Bill was the brains, but people thought he was a cutthroat. He had a big heart, but he was afraid to show it. He touched the lives of many people, helped a ton of people. He was always looking out for the underdog."

No one knows that better than former 49ers tight end Eason Ramson, whose drug addiction spun his life into poverty and prison. Walsh never gave up on him.

"When I was in prison, my mother passed," said Ransom. "My sister called Bill and said, 'I know you're Eason's coach.' And Bill said, 'No, I'm more than a coach. I'm a friend.' He offered financial help and other help. He wrote me in prison, and then came to visit me in prison."

Ransom feared a long imprisonment when Walsh intervened.

"I was facing 'three strikes' when Bill wrote to the judge and said I was worth saving," he said. Ransom got out of prison, cleaned up his life and now helps troubled youth turn around their own lives.

"Bill donated money to this cause, volunteered his services," said Ransom. "He was just a coach. He didn't have to do anything. Jerry Rice was to be an emcee for one of my fundraisers, but it fell through. I was panicky and called Bill. He said, 'We're a team.' He showed up with Ronnie Lott."

Walsh was as clever in the draft room as he was at the chalkboard. His 49ers drafts are legendary. Joe Montana was a third-round pick, Dwight Clark a 10th-round selection. Starting defensive backs Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson all came out of the 1981 draft. Walsh had an eye for talent. He signed Dwight Hicks as a free agent. He traded for Fred Dean and Jack "Hacksaw" Reynolds. All played on Super Bowl teams.

Walsh resigned as 49ers coach after Super Bowl XXIII, his second title-game victory over the Brown-run Bengals, in 1988. The 49ers, still carrying his imprint, would win Super Bowl.s in '89 and '94 under Walsh's successor, Seifert.

Walsh worked as an NFL analyst for NBC, but his stay in the broadcast booth was short-lived. In 1992, he began a second head-coaching stint at Stanford. Holmoe and Ring joined him as assistants.

"If everyone in business prepared for a meeting like he did, you'd be well prepared," said Ring. "He'd tell us we only have 10-minute blocks to teach something, and he'd have us write out in detail how we'd teach it."

Stanford defeated Joe Paterno and Penn State in the Blockbuster Bowl in Walsh's first season back on The Farm. But after a 10-3 beginning, the Cardinal slipped to 4-7 and 3-7-1, and Walsh stepped down.

Walsh returned to the 49ers as vice-president and general manager in 1999 and stayed through 2001, helping produce one playoff team. He remained with the team for three more years as a special consultant.

He returned to Stanford a third time in 2004, this time as a special assistant to athletic director Ted Leland. When Leland left in '05 to take a position at the University of Pacific, Walsh was named interim athletic director and oversaw the early stages of Stanford Stadium's renovation before Bob Bowlsby was hired as the permanent athletic director.

In late 2006, Walsh was diagnosed with leukemia. As he began chemotherapy treatments, those he influenced in their football careers took stock of their relationship with their mentor.

"He was the most influential person in my football career," said Holmgren. "He gave me a chance to coach in the NFL five years after being a high school coach. When I was his quarterback coach, I used to get mad at him. He was a perfectionist, a taskmaster, very demanding. But you know, 20 years later, it's exactly what I do."

His players experienced similar emotions.

"Everybody gets cut in football," said Holmoe, "and those Bill cut got mad at him. He was extremely emotional, and had sensitive feelings for his players and coaches, but he was afraid to show it. But over the last 20 years, they've all reconciled, and Bill loves having reunions with his players."

Zagaris said: "Bill wasn't the typical coach who'd sit around coaches meetings and spit (chewing tobacco) into a cup. He was a complicated man, multifaceted, a historian, and brilliant not just about football, but about people. He was a great judge of people.

"As a coach, he kept people at an arm's length. When he came back to the 49ers (in an administrative role), he was more human. I told him on the phone not long ago that I loved him."

As leukemia worked its way into his body, and before he made his illness public, Walsh was asked what he'd like written on his tombstone. He paused for 10 seconds with that faraway, contemplative look.

"He lived a full life," he said finally. "He loved others, and others loved him."

Contact Dave Newhouse of the Oakland Tribune at dnewhouse@angnewspapers.com